The Good Ones - Highly useful links

Following in the footsteps of "Very Necessary," but not Hot or Not, I wanted to collect some of the best, most fun, most worthwhile links that are Worth Looking At even if they're not crucial enough for blogroll status or daily checking. Useful reference, good writing, or important viewpoints will wind a site up here.

1. Good Writers: Here lies the fiction
   
   
   • Phantom Professor, by Elaine Liner, who was Dooced (to be let go from your employment due to the content of your blog, see dooce.com)
   
   
   • Coyote Lawyer by Jeff Lahan, a Las Cruces, NM prosecutor who writes absolutely hilarious, occasionally unprintable "Tales of a fictional solo lawyer in Fiction Town, USA"
   
   
   • Anonymous Lawyer, product of the warped mind of Jeremy, host of Jeremy's Weblog. Ha, when was the last time you saw that word written out? Just this instant, Jeremy's current post is about Alan Dershowitz' review of Kermit Roosevelt's new novel, In the Shadow of the Law. Jeremy writes about law school, lawyers, and the world in his own person, but when he cut loose as Anonymous Partner, the antihero of Anonymous Lawyer, the blawging world was rocked on its foundations. Some hated the premise, some hated the tone, some hated what it purported to reveal. I thought it was brilliant, and twisted. Congratulations to Jeremy on landing a well-deserved book deal, and also on avoiding the life of corporate lawfirm drudgery (or worse) that he so cruelly mocked.


2. Journal-ists: People who don't make stuff up-- at least not out of whole cloth-- but have a good take on things
   
   
   • Ann Althouse. Lawprof in Madison, Wisconsin; right of left; writes in a very personal and sometimes biting style about her observations of high culture, low culture, and matters legal. Gets a certain amount of respect from lefty bloggers, who realize that she could "kick their ass in a fight." I wouldn't say I agree with everything she writes, what with her being a Bush supporter who hated Kerry and blogged from that perspective, but she's interesting and smart and her archives go all the way back to January '04, check them out if you want to read some good stuff.
     
   
   
   • Jeremy certainly belongs here. He's written song parody lyrics, lists of Things (Top 100 Law Students You Don't Want to Be, Ten Things You Don't Want Your Syllabus to Say, among others), and all sorts of other things. See his index for a full rundown.
     
3. Factual stuff
   
   
• Baby Name Wizard. You may already be familiar with the site's NameVoyager, with its jazzy graphics, fun interface, and addicting content that is the BNW. It'll show you growing and declining popularity in first names for top thousand names, now since the 1880s and up through 2004 or so. Fascinating. But the Blog is good too, and check out the FAQs. FAQ? Frequently Asked QuestionS? Right, that thing.


• IMDB. Very nearly self-explanatory, "internet movie database." Links to other movies through "movie connections," usually a fair bit of trivia and selected quotation, and the ability to see all of what an actor has been in to date, good bad and ugly. Probably one of the first internet sites I regularly want back to, along with the UBL, the Ultimate Band List.


• Google Maps. Definitely self-explanatory, but also better than the alternatives. Shockingly, not the first result when you type "maps" into google; are they slipping? It's the 5th result. Mapquest is popular, I get it, but if you're setting the rules of the game, shouldn't you be giving yourself a weensy advantage? If not by a boost in the rankings (I know, I know, it would be unfair), then by putting up a Special Result at the top, as when you enter a phrase like "madonna birthday", address, or calculation? I mean, look at the features, for goodness sake. It's crazy! You can look up patent numbers! UPS Tracking numbers! All kinds of numbers!


• 3 Quarks Daily. Rapid-fire science, literature, and other nonfiction articles.

Comments, as always may be used to give me update-fodder for this list.